Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Barcelona: Truly Rich

How do you tell that a person is truly rich? She puts intangible things (i.e., pride, benevolence, and happiness) before money.

Since way back, gigantic, Spain-based Barcelona Football Club never wears any sponsor's logo on their jersey, foregoing tens of millions of pounds a year. But this week they start to wear Unicef's logo.

Unicef is not paying Barcelona anything. Instead, Barcelona is paying Unicef 1.5 million euros a year to help poor children suffering from AIDS. Furthermore, Unicef can use any of Barcelona's players (including popular Ronaldinho) as its spokespersons, for free. Barcelona simply said, "we're more than a football club."

I've never been a big fan of Barcelona. Actually I just realized that their jerseys used to be "clean" (Oh.. so that's why they look so 'awkward'!). But now, I'll be paying more attention to them. And that is good marketing on Barcelona's part. Marketing aimed for the heart.

First photo credit: bbc.co.ukSecond photo credit: New York Times via here.